I am a healer afraid of healing - advice welcome!

#1 - July 27, 2012, 1:47 p.m.

Hi guys,

I've been on and off WoW since WotLK. Never played too much, got more into it when Cataclysm came to Azeroth. Leveled my first couple of characters to 85, had some fun in dungeons.

One thing that I always enjoyed most was healing with a Holy Priest. I have leveled one to 85 before, deleted it when I last took a break. Now I'm back and would very much like to start leveling a Holy Priest again.

The problem is... I love healing early dungeons (yes, really). I love healing Outland dungeons, Lich King dungeons... even Cata dungeons. However, I'm terribly afraid of healing two things:

- raids
- some heroic instances

I don't exactly know why that is. One reason might be that I have never actually raided. I did join a PUG a couple of times, but to be honest - it ended miserably. Don't even know if that was my fault, because I rarely knew what exactly was happening. I have no trouble healing a couple of people in a dungeon, I love my grid+clique setup that one of my friends taught me back in WotLK. I just get lost in raid healing when so many people are taking damage and it seems like everybody is going to die all at once if I don't do something.

Some heroics are the same for me. While only 5-manned, it mostly depends on the group. Before I got better, I had trouble with normal heroics when the tank wasn't very good. I also constantly had problems in ZG/ZA.

I think my problems are:

- lack of experience
- lack of control of the situation
- inability to draw conclusions why a fight is going good/bad - is it me, is it the tank, is it just a bad day?

It got to the point where I do want to level my new Holy Priest, but am almost sure that I won't enjoy the endgame, which - for a change - I would like to do.

Has anybody had similar problems when they first started their career as a professional healer? :) How was it for you, how long did it take to get accustomed to raiding, your role and what exactly is to be done? Obviously being in a good and helpful guild is good, but as an alternative, is there any way to simply get better without this terrible stress killing my desire to heal?

Cheers,
PK

Taepsilum

Community

#20 - Aug. 3, 2012, 12:57 p.m.

Hello Brie,

I think most of the answers here have some really good advices, I'm sure they will help you to be more relaxed about healing and start enjoying raiding and running heroics with your characters even more!

If there's one thing I'd like to reiterate it's: Do not ever be afraid of messing up.
This is a game, above all it's supposed to be fun, it can be intense, a bit stressful at times, but fun needs to be a constant on the whole game experience, so don't ever let anyone take that away from you.

So feel free to try, to fail, to learn from experience, join the LFG, Dungeons, BG's, LFR, don't be afraid of letting someone die, it is all part of the game and we've all experienced it in the beginning. You will keep improving your skills and be more confident about your gameplay in no time.

There are millions of players in this game, and that means you'll meet players with all sorts of different personalities, you'll find those that are more helpful, but also those that are impatient and that won’t hesitate on hitting the kick button if you so much wear a not-so-fashionable transmogrification set.
All I’m saying is, don’t let the bad experiences that might happen occasionally put you off from trying again and having good ones, which I’m sure will be the vast majority.
In the meantime, you’ll make friends and you’ll probably find players who you’ll enjoy grouping up with more often so you won’t have to rely on pure luck when finding heroic dungeon groups that are more tolerant towards less experienced players.